


Glare me down and face me

by Boz (Bozaloshtsh)



Category: FlashForward
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-21
Updated: 2009-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-04 22:19:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/34698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bozaloshtsh/pseuds/Boz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Turns out physics destroys more lives than alcoholism. Let's see how deep the bullet lies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Glare me down and face me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Milady](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Milady/gifts).



> As usual, I have no idea what this story turned into. I hope it winds up touching on something the recipient wanted, fingers crossed. This assumes familiarity with all episodes of ABC's FlashForward up until the December break. If you haven't seen all of them, I can't guarantee the degree of spoilage.
> 
> Thanks to Leupagus for the quick and dirty beta. Any typos left over are entirely my fault.

"Do you ever find yourself thinking about what people could accomplish if they were somehow magically able to reclaim all the time they spent wishing away their shitty choices in life?"

It's a chilly -- for Los Angeles -- September morning, and 9:15 AM finds Special Agents Al Gough and Demetri Noh lost in the snack machine forest of the LA field office. Demetri can see Al's reflection in the eerily lit Plexiglas standing between himself and some chocolaty satisfaction, and unfortunately, Al looks like he actually expects Demetri to answer him. Demetri rolls his eyes and waits for the machine to spit out his peanut M&amp;Ms. The bag starts to fall, but because -- as far as Demetri can tell -- God hates him, his M&amp;Ms get stuck in the negative space of the machine.

"Engineering a candy machine that actually dispenses candy'd be the fucking place to start- Jesus-" Demetri kicks the machine solidly. A few times. The M&amp;Ms stay firmly in place, but just as Demetri starts to feel motivated to true violence, Al's hand on his shoulder stops him, and with a few taps of the machine buttons, launches a Hail Mary of Cool Ranch Doritos that knocks the M&amp;Ms down with it.

"Anger management, brother," Al reaches down and slaps the M&amp;Ms into Demetri's hand with a quiet smile and a raised eyebrow. "You need some."

"Now you just sound like my mother," Demetri mutters, collecting their coffees and racing to catch the elevator.

"If your mother sounds like a thirty-two-year-old black man, you have bigger problems than a candy machine." The croak of Mark's morning voice in the elevator still doesn't quite prepare Demetri for the sight of him looking like warmed over shit. Wedeck's been looking for his partner since 8:00 AM, but Demetri doesn't have the heart to tell him with the man looking like that, so instead he just hands him what would've been his second coffee of the day.

Apparently, Al has no such compunctions. "Wedeck's been looking for you for the past hour."

Mark winces, and Demetri can see Al start to feel bad. "To be fair, I think he's holding you responsible for something Missing Persons fucked up, the Moringa case? So if you head him off with an email, the beast may retreat back into its cave."

"Thanks for the heads up," Mark sighs, and the elevator ascends.

-

"Most people, when trying to understand what happened to them the afternoon of September 24th, are comfortable making the assumption that time is a single, unbroken conveyor belt upon which we are placed, forever marching onwards."

Simon sits facing the room of unremarkable minds and asks himself for the third time if the payoff for working with the FBI will be worth the fucking aggravation of asking people slower than most of the CERN lab assistants for help. Three times is a lot for him. He's not the type to spend time convincing himself he doesn't want to do something because what a bloody waste of time that is, honestly. That's one of the few (four, to be exact) things he doesn't understand about Lloyd. But now's not the time to be thinking of Lloyd.

"That is a stupid fucking thing to assume, my friends, as it bears no resemblance to what most of the scientific community understands as time these days, however comforting the idea of rigid time progression may be," Simon continues.

"So what?" Assistant Director Wedeck. The only one of the bunch Simon finds amusing, and that's still mostly in spite of himself. The man seems unimpressed, but Simon would bet that he practices that face in the mirror most mornings. "Are you saying people's visions won't come true?"

"Why would I feel the need to clarify something that one of your own agents has done a far better job of illustrating?" Simon shrugs. He feels the relative temperature of the room drop a few degrees and has to specifically try not to smile.

"Then why is pertinent information revealed by the visions proving factual?" Simon turns to look at Special Agent -- Hawk. Sadly, any semiotic significance she may have aspired to validate through her name fell rather short of the mark. Pretty girl, though Simon can't say he appreciates her tone of voice.

"As I said, time isn't rigid," he says, supposing, belatedly, that he could've kept some of the derision out of his tone considering the relationship he hopes to cultivate with these people is supposed to be a political one. "I don't like to repeat myself, so listen to what I am saying. These visions aren't all or nothing, and some of them aren't nearly as important as others.

"Some people," Simon continues, before anyone can cut him off. "Are not as important as others."

"Aren't as important to whom?" Wedeck again.

"To who- oh for god's sake," and now Simon can't help but smile. "To the universe, Assistant Director. To the divine nature of things."

-

Olivia Benford is not the type to believe in soulmates. Her mother was the type, sure. So was her sister.

Privately, she thinks that most women do. Patriarchal influence aside, she figures the concept winds up being closer to a defense mechanism -- a safety-blanket -- more than anything else. Not just to explain the failed relationships in their lives, but to give their lives direction.

"Can I get the second pair of wide-grip Kellys, and- you, Rita, when I push back the T1, it's gonna spray a little bit, so if you could-" and the girl is already moving to suction. Olivia has to remember to making "borrowing" her from hematology a more permanent thing.

And that's the second time this evening her mind has wandered with a patient open on the table. Olivia frowns to herself, and tries to keep the movements of her stitching careful but hurried. The faster pace is harder, should keep her more focused.

Later, with her hands cold, stinging, and freshly scrubbed, Lloyd Simcoe finds her on the floor, and they talk about Harvard and how their lives should've intersected (before Mark) years ago, not six months from now. Later still, with her hands shaking, face stinging this time from where the not-Paramedic shoved her into the brick, she chases the swiftly retreating ambulance with Lloyd tucked away inside reminding herself that she is not the type -- _not_ the type, no that's her mother, oh god –- to believe in soulmates.

-

"At least now I won't be the one to shoot you," and okay, yes, Mark knows it's a shitty attempt at trying to lighten things up a little bit, but he doesn't have many choices, and if Demetri were a woman, based on the look his partner's face, she'd be crying right now.

"You are an _asshole_, you know that." Or maybe not crying, so much as kicking the shit out of him, and the lack of gender limitations on that are enough to make Mark scramble to find something else to tell Demetri, something that won't give away the tattered remnants of what was once a pretty goddamn stellar plan to find Demetri's future killer.

Oh right. Mark puts some sugar in his voice. "Coming from you, that's almost cute."

And now Demetri is looking at him. "Are you actively trying to get me to hit you?"

"Would it help?" Mark realizes what he's said a half second after he's actually said it and winces. Demetri doesn't move, but he does start to talk.

"Is that what this is? Is this tantrum your way of fighting the future, man? Because as plans go, I can say with relative authority that this is a pretty shitty plan."

Mark smiles and feels his lip start to bleed again. He gets why Demetri thinks so, but three birds, one stone, so no, he can't really agree. Maybe Demetri would get why this is a victory too, if Mark explained it to him, but. Just thinking about the drinking unearths the shame from a grave Mark thought he'd dug much deeper, and who really wants to hear about his marital problems.

"Mark." He can tell from Dem's tone of voice it's not the first time he's said his name. Mark hates flying, but he wishes they were both already on the plane so that he wouldn't have to deal with this conversation right now.

"Did it ever- just- jesus-" Demetri's stopped to smile and shake his head at the sky, and Mark uses the moment to wonder if he'll miss the job or the people he worked with more. "Did it ever even occur to you that my death might be bigger than just you pulling the trigger? And now that we're leaving Hong Kong without figuring anything else more about it out-"

"-attention American Airlines customers, we are now also boarding business class and economy preferred for flight AA29 direct to Los Angeles, California."

"That's us, pardner." Mark tries to use the easy out. He knows full well Dem's death could be part of something much larger connected to the flash forwards, but there's no nice way of saying "later" to his partner on a warpath. But just as he's grabbed his bags and started to make for the line, Demetri gets up in his face.

"We're leaving, and we still know _nothing_, Mark."

"Dem-"

"No. Do you really think Wedeck's going to let me continue the investigation into my death once we're back in LA? Screw suspension, if IA gets wind that _you're_ the one who pulls the trigger on me six months from now-"

"I _was_ the one, Demetri. Let IA find out, let them fire me, and I _won't_ be."

"Some consolation that'll be," Demetri hisses. "When you're sitting pretty at my funeral because Wedeck or Janice or Vreede or who the fuck knows shoots me instead, and you did _nothing_ to help me stop them because you did _nothing_ to help me figure out _why_."

Mark doesn't know what to say. Dem looks to turn away but stops for a second. He seems incapable of looking Mark in the face.

"Why do I wind up dead?" Dimitri says, more quietly this time, and Mark knows he's not asking the floor.

-

Lloyd doesn't know much about his surroundings, what, with a bloody sack over his head, but he's wrapped in the bland coolness that comes from temperature regulation and the air is dryer than he'd like. He's tied to whatever he's been made to sit upon, and from the way it squeaks and rattles, he'd bet a metal fold-up chair -- were he a betting man.

"Have you ever asked yourself a question that began, 'in another life?'" Lloyd jerks towards the sound and spares a moment to wonder if he shouldn't have done that. He's not really well-versed in kidnapee etiquette, oddly enough.

"Well," Lloyd starts and then stops, wondering if the question was rhetorical.

"Do go on." Not rhetorical after all.

"I _am_ a physicist," is what Lloyd decides to reply with, and his captor -- a man, probably older than 30, English decidedly not his first language based on his accent -- laughs.

"I should probably amend that to 'in another dimension' then, Dr. Simcoe. Apologies." Lloyd is curious to know if the man is sorry for the passive theological presumption in the first instance of the question or for not originally amending his question to suit what he apparently already knew about Lloyd's occupation. Irrelevant in the end, Lloyd supposes, but still.

"Are you going to kill me?" Better to get the difficult questions out of the way first.

"I had no plans to do so, Dr. Simcoe, no. I can't promise that will stay that way, but I can say with relative authority that the likelihood of my deciding to end your life is not going to increase during your short tenure with us here tonight."

"And where is here, exactly?"

"A brilliantly undisclosed location, if I do say so myself." Of course.

"And who are you?" Lloyd tries to keep impatience out of his voice but hears himself failing. "If you don't mind my asking."

"I certainly don't mind you asking, I just don't have much of an answer for you; at least, not tonight. A friend, I should hope. But friends aren't generally in the practice of kidnapping one another, so maybe not a friend. It's all very pedantically philosophical, don't you think?"

"I can only assume you want something from me," Lloyd says, not really knowing what else to say. The logical pitfalls are becoming tedious, but he also hasn't been assaulted or blackmailed, and accordingly, Lloyd would like to keep it that way.

"Indeed. You must be eager to get back to your son. And that lovely Dr. Benford." Lloyd is fascinated by how distinctly he can process his body's fear reaction. The sensory deprivation must have something to do with it, but his brief foray into psychology seems eons ago and getting farther by the minute.

"Lloyd -- I hope you don't mind my calling you by your Christian name, though Lloyd isn't Christian in the slightest -- goodness, I do digress, Lloyd. Are you truly laboring under the impression that your little experiment caused everyone to see the future?"

And the key -- Lloyd is sure of it -- to this conversation is in understanding the peculiar inflection the man just put on the word "future."

"To be perfectly honest, I'm more concerned with the deaths that occurred as a-" and Lloyd doesn't want to call them this, Simon calls them this and he is _not_ Simon, but. "-side-effect. Whatever future we did see, well."

"Well indeed, Lloyd."

The man sounds as if he's laughing at him, and Lloyd begins to get angry. "Did I say something amusing?"

"Yes. I thought I was going to have to let you down gently, but since all you're taking credit for is needless death, I'm relieved to be able to tell you that you are not responsible for any of it."

"What?" And even that one word takes Lloyd a minute because his breath is stuck in his chest.

"Your little particle acceleration project didn't cause these flash forwards, doctor; I did."

"Who are you?" Lloyd asks for a second time, fear returning full-force though he can't place why.

"For all intents and purposes, God. I'm afraid our time together is up, Lloyd. At least, for tonight."

"Wait-" Lloyd tries, but someone hits him in the back of the head, and the only thing he has to ask questions of is the darkness of his own mind.

-

"How do we know who's important, then?"

Simon looks around the room at folds his hands. "You're asking the wrong questions. You're assuming that the important answers involving the cause behind flash forwards that occurred will be found by piecing together scraps from events whose ultimate significance is impossible to divine."

Wedeck laughs. "And I suppose you know the right questions to ask, Dr. Campos."

"I'm a physicist, AD Wedeck," Simon sighs. "Not a prophet."


End file.
